Essay: Humor in Hamlet: “Lighten Tension in Hamlet w/Humor: How Shakespeare Brought Laughs in Grave Scenes

Humor can serve as a way to lighten the tension in an artistic work that deals with heavy themes such as madness and suicide. Humor can also provide a lighter viewpoint on the same matters that are being dealt with in a dramatic manner. Scenes that are meant to express serious thematic elements may insert humor in order to ease the dramatic severity the audience had been experiencing prior to the humorous moments. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the gravediggers in the final act of the play serve as the humorous instrument that offers a brief relief from the catastrophic actions that had preceded the scene. One may assume that a scene taking place in a graveyard and dealing with the subjects of death and suicide would be rather horrific or depressing. Shakespeare decides to take such a scene and have it contain wit and humor from those one may expect to be speaking in a more dramatic manner when considering what exactly is going in the scene itself. As humorous scenes such as the one with the gravediggers, the humor that is meant to serve as a moment of comic relief also illustrates an emphasis on the theme of morality and foreshadows the final tragedy that occurs in the very next scene. Shakespeare is able to use the characters that one might assume upon first glance were only there to shed some comedic light on the tragedy to go a step further by expressing the importance of the major themes of the plays to the other characters, as well as the audience.
The first scene of the final act of the play is one of the most suspenseful moments in all of its entirety, especially after having just dealing some of the most tragic aspects of the play. Polonius had been killed by Hamlet, which caused to Ophelia to be driven into insanity. Whilst being the lady of the court that went mad after her own father had been slain by the man she loved, she ends up drowning. Several of the characters come to a general consensus that her death was an act of suicide. During Shakespeare’s time, those who committed suicide were denied a Christian burial since such an act was considered to be one of the greatest sins that could be committed. Seeing as how those who commit suicide are unable to confess their sins and are partaking in a variation of the sin of murder, Ophelia’s chances of getting into Heaven are considered to be slim. This means a Christian burial would seem to be a waste since there was arguably nothing Christian about her death.
Despite this tradition of the Church, Claudius commands that Ophelia be buried on the grounds of the church-yard. Such a command sparks a sense of indignation with one of the gravediggers as he works alongside his gravedigging companion:
FIRST CLOWN: Is she to be buried in a Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own
Salvation?
SECOND CLOWN: I tell thee she is, and therefore make her grave straight. The coroner
Hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
FIRST CLOWN: How can that be unless she drowned herself in her own defense?
SECOND CLOWN: Why, ‘tis found so.
FIRST CLOWN: It must be so offendendo, it cannot be else; for her lies the point: if I
drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an act hath three branches: It is to
act, to do, and to perform. Argal she drowned herself wittingly.
SECOND CLOWN: Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver.
FIRST CLOWN: Give me leave. Here lies the water–good. Here stands the man–good. If
the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life (5.1.1-20).
The excerpt of dialogue that Shakespeare gives to the gravediggers allows the subject of suicide a manner that is light-hearted and meant to be presented in an amusing way. Such a scene would have appeared to be humorous to the commoners watching the play during Shakespeare’s time because they would have been able to relate how those of the upper classes would be able to get special treatment that those in the lower classes would not have, including being able to surpass Christian law by being given a proper a burial despite committing a great sin.
Shakespeare using the commoner as a means of humor was something that was quite common in his plays. The light-hearted banter that would have appealed to the lower-classes during the Elizabethan times continues with the discussion of the trade of the gravediggers. Shakespeare’s appeal to the lower classes with the criticism of the Church and the upper classes are demonstrated with the two gravediggers talking about they are the only ancient gentleman because they are doing the profession that Adam had done before them:
Why, there thou sayst, and the more pity that great folk should have cont’nance in this
world to drown or hang themselves more than their even Christian Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and gravemakers; they hold up Adam’s profession (5.1.26-31).
The gravediggers thus us their situation and trade to prove the comedy of a commoner that uses his wit to get the better of those who consider themselves to be social superior.Not only would this scene been particularly appealing to those of the common class, but it is also able to somewhat lighten the stress around Ophelia’s death and offer the audience a brief moment to laugh at the long and tension-filled play.
Even at the moment when Hamlet comes onto the scene, the gravediggers still partake in their witty banter. When Hamlet and Horatio come upon the grave-digging site, they see the primary gravedigger singing as he throws random skulls up from the ground. Such an act confuses the titular character, especially since death is typically affiliated with remorse and, more or less, an aspect of respect but Hamlet is confused as to how the gravedigger can go about acting as if death were nothing but a tedious task: “Has this fellow no feeling of his business that a sings at grave-making? (5.1.65-66). For the gravediggers, death is not the solemn idea that Hamlet had contemplated in his “To be or not to be” speech. They do not focus on love and revenge whilst discussing humanity. To them, death is equal amongst everyone. Death is something they deal with everyday, something that does not necessarily require others to receive special treatment above others. The primary gravediggers uses puns and crude logic to further demonstrate his outlook on death:
HAMLET: I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.
FIRST CLOWN: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore ‘tis not yours: for my part, I do not
lie in’t and yet, it is mine.
HAMLET: Thous dost lie in’t, to be in’t and to say it is thine: ‘tis for the dead, not for the
quick: therefore thou liest.
FIRST CLOWN: ‘Tis a quick lie, sir, ‘twill away again from me to you.
HAMLET: What man dost thou dig it for?
FIRST CLOWN: For no man, sir.
HAMLET: What woman then?
FIRST CLOWN: For none neither.
HAMLET: Who is to be buried in’t?
FIRST CLOWN: One that was a woman sir, but, rest her soul, she’s dead (5.1.119-132).
The Prince of Denmark may see the skull-throwing and singing as a discourtesy, but the black comedy of these commoners shows that death waits for everyone and the outcome of everyone’s bodies will be the same universally.
The witty banter between the primary gravedigger and Hamlet leads the scene into resorting to back it dramatic speeches dealing with the play’s major theme of death. Matters of death and mortality had already been discussed by Hamlet earlier on in the play, but the character’s acceptance of the inevitability of death is shown with his realization that Yorik, the King’s jester from his childhood, ended up decomposed in the ground like everyone else. Hamlet had commented on decomposition before when telling Claudius that the body of Polonius was being eaten by worms. Yorik was amongst the random the skulls that the gravedigger had tossed up from the ground, which leads Hamlet to come to the realization that all men will have to face the same effect of death and decomposition, even those as exemplar as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
The scene that inadvertently stands out from the rest of the play bodes well with the entirety of the work by intensifying the tragic effects. It proves to be paradoxical by providing moments of humor and wit that leads into the all too tragic and catastrophic events that proceed in the remainder of the play. It serves as a way for the audience to take a breath and reflect before they are struck with the abrupt and dramatic downfall of several of the characters. It also offers a sense of realism by offering a realistic portrayal of the world through showing how death, while undoubtedly somber and grotesque, is something everyone is going to have to face. It doesn’t matter who they were before they died or how exactly they became deceased; everyone is going to end up in the ground and is going to become a feast for worms. The cosmic humor that Shakespeare likes to use in his plays is apparent in this scene, with the gravediggers “[forcing] us to assess ourselves as human beings, a species with enough self-consciousness to know that we are born, live, and die with no empirical understanding whatsoever of the meaning of life” (Widdicombe 105). The gravediggers not only give the audience a chance to laugh at something that is meant to be humorous, but also offers a perspective on one of the play’s major themes in a more realistic way than those who preceded them. The discussion of death being an aspect of life that everyone will be forced to face at some point in their life foreshadows the the deaths of several of the main characters in the following scene. The gravediggers arguably not only come off as the most humorous characters in the entirety of the play, but also ones that are the most realistic and pinpoint the most important aspects of the overarching themes of death and mortality.